§1.1 Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns advertisements (“ads”), such as ads served in an online environment. In particular, the present invention concerns helping advertisers to develop better online ad campaigns.
§1.2 Background Information
Advertising using traditional media, such as television, radio, newspapers and magazines, is well known. Unfortunately, even when armed with demographic studies and entirely reasonable assumptions about the typical audience of various media outlets, advertisers recognize that much of their ad budget is simply wasted. Moreover, it is very difficult to identify and eliminate such waste.
Recently, advertising over more interactive media has become popular. For example, as the number of people using the Internet has exploded, advertisers have come to appreciate media and services offered over the Internet as a potentially powerful way to advertise.
Interactive advertising provides opportunities for advertisers to target their ads to a receptive audience. That is, targeted ads are more likely to be useful to end users since the ads may be relevant to a need inferred from some user activity (e.g., relevant to a user's search query to a search engine, relevant to content in a document requested by the user, etc.) Query keyword relevant advertising has been used by search engines. One example of a query keyword relevant advertising system is the AdWords advertising system by Google of Mountain View, Calif. Similarly, content-relevant advertising systems have been proposed. For example, U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 10/314,427 (incorporated herein by reference and referred to as “the '427 application”) titled “METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR SERVING RELEVANT ADVERTISEMENTS”, filed on Dec. 6, 2002 and listing Jeffrey A. Dean, Georges R. Harik and Paul Bucheit as inventors, and 10/375,900 (incorporated by reference and referred to as “the '900 application”) titled “SERVING ADVERTISEMENTS BASED ON CONTENT,” filed on Feb. 26, 2003 and listing Darrell Anderson, Paul Bucheit, Alex Carobus, Claire Cui, Jeffrey A. Dean, Georges R. Harik, Deepak Jindal and Narayanan Shivakumar as inventors, describe methods and apparatus for serving ads relevant to the content of a document, such as a Web page for example. The AdSense system by Google is an example of a content-relevant advertising system.
In many online ad systems, one or more ads are displayed in association with a document, such as a search results page, or a Webpage with content for example. Typically, online ads include embedded information (e.g., links) such that when the ad is selected (e.g., by a user clicking on the ad), a browser is loaded with a document (e.g., a Webpage) associated with the ad. Such a document is commonly referred to as the “landing page” of the ad.
Targeted ads may include one or more serving criteria, such as targeting keywords. In some ad delivery systems, there are different types of keywords. For example, if “Broad Match” targeting keyword or keyword phrase is used, the ad may be served when users search for the keyword, in any order, and possibly along with other terms. The ads may also be served automatically for expanded matches, including plurals and relevant variations. If “Phrase Match” targeting is used, the ad may be served when a user searches on the phrase (with the words in the same order as the phrase), even if the query includes other terms. If “Exact Match” targeting is used, the ad may be served when users search for the specific phrase, without any other terms in the query. If “Negative Keyword” targeting is used (bound to either a phrase or word), the ad will not be served in connection with any queries containing the keywords being negated.
Selecting targeting keywords to meet each advertiser's goals may be difficult. Various targeting keyword suggestion tools are possible. For example, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/389,688 (incorporated herein by reference), titled “SUGGESTING AND/OR PROVIDING AD SERVING CONSTRAINT INFORMATION”, filed on Mar. 14, 2003, and listing Jeffrey A. Dean, Georges R. Harik and Paul Bucheit as inventors, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/419,692 (incorporated herein by reference), titled “DETERMINING CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION FOR ADVERTISEMENTS AND USING SUCH DETERMINED CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION TO SUGGEST TARGETING CRITERIA AND/OR IN THE SERVING OF ADVERTISEMENTS”, filed on Apr. 21, 2003, and listing Amit Singhal, Mehran Sahami, Amit Patel and Stephen Lawrence as the inventors, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/750,451 (incorporated herein by reference), titled “SUGGESTING AND/OR PROVIDING TARGETING CRITERIA FOR ADVERTISEMENTS”, filed on Dec. 31, 2003, and listing Ross Koningstein, Valentin Spitkovsky, Georges R. Harik and Noam Shazeer as inventors, describe various ways of suggesting targeting keywords.
Sometimes, the number of targeting keyword suggestions can be large. Further, some targeting keywords may be better suggestions than others. Accordingly, it may be desirable to score the suggested targeting keywords and sort them using their scores. Thus, if a large number of targeting keyword suggestions are to be presented to an advertiser, the best suggestions should be presented first. Unfortunately, however, if targeting keyword suggestions come from different sources that use different scores, it is challenging to combine the targeting keyword suggestions in a way that is meaningful to an advertiser.
In view of the foregoing, it would be useful to improve the way in which targeting keywords are suggested to advertisers, particularly in instances where different suggestion tools or techniques provide a number of different sets of targeting keyword suggestions.